


carry this.

by comatoseroses



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Gen, kylo's saber deserves redemption more than he ever did lmao
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-03
Updated: 2020-03-03
Packaged: 2021-02-23 06:02:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 794
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23006857
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/comatoseroses/pseuds/comatoseroses
Summary: 'What Finn does know in the moment, as surely as he knows that Rey is golden, that the ocean air tastes of salt, that the First Order is never going to tear apart another family again, is that something in the saber at his feet is suffering, and that it's a suffering he knows somehow."a 'Finn purifies Kylo's lightsaber" fic that may be to be continued.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 26
Collections: Finn Centric Recommendations





	carry this.

The first time Finn connects with the saber, he nearly blacks out. 

Palpatine is dead, Kylo Ren is dead, the war is won. Everything's come down to cleanup efforts and prevention, prevention, prevention. 

Finn isn't sure why he agreed to come comb over the death star remains for anything useful, except maybe that he's hoping to get a chance to really talk to Rey for the first time in what feels like months. He's moving towards her when he hears it. Over the rush of relief, the thunder of his own pulse, the crashing of the waves on the wreckage around them. 

Finn stops. He looks down and it's there, hilt and cross guard cracked from the way that it had landed. But the cracks go deeper than the surface, deeper than the death star, deeper than the core of the planet, achingly, unnaturally farther down. A pull, stronger than gravity. Because there's suffering here, and he can feel it. Somewhere in the damage, in the depth and the darkness, the painful abyss, there's… a thread. 

A single thread. A light. A reflection of the potential for it. 

He doesn't know that that's what he's seeing at first. He's newer to actively feeling out the Force than Rey is, wary and skittish and only recently properly reconnected. 

(Slip died on Jakku and he _felt it_ , and then he'd felt everything else: the fear and the panic and the anger and the lights going out all at once, holes torn into the universe that felt like they'd been torn out of his own skin. 

Finn is a lot of things. Afraid has a way of being one of them. He walks around the edges of the Force in some ways, in the hopes that he won't have to feel what he'd felt all over again. He's told Rey about Jakku, but not that last part. As careful as she is in inviting him to learn alongside her, he thinks she already knows.) 

What Finn does know in the moment, as surely as he knows that Rey is golden, that the ocean air tastes of salt, that the First Order is never going to tear apart another family again, is that something in the saber at his feet is suffering, and that it's a suffering he knows somehow. And like he's done in the face of any suffering he can understand, anything he's thought he could help by sharing or listening, he reaches out. Stoops down, grabs Kylo Ren's lightsaber by the hilt, and--

It's _screaming_ . A darkness so thick, so pervasive, that it makes it feel like air doesn't get into his lungs when he inhales. It's the feeling of being forced into another shape, like his bones have all grown into a mold they weren't made for, never having even the illusion of a choice about it. Being trapped in a purpose he was never meant to have, never wanted, and _oh_ , that's what it is, that's what he recognizes, and there's that thread again if he can-- if he can just _reach_ deep enough-- 

Finn comes back to himself with shuddering breaths, with tear streaks down his face, with Rey's anxious grip on his shoulders, so firm that she feels like the only thing holding him up when she helps him finish standing. 

"It's over," she's saying, voice shaking, "it's over now, you're alright. You're back." (More question than reassurance.)

"I- yeah. Yeah, I'm sorry, I was-- there was." Finn swallows. Glances down to his hands, still gripping the saber so tightly that his knuckles have gone pale. (But they're steady. Not a hint of a tremor.) "I don't know what it was."

Rey follows his glance. Her expression pinches. Finn sees it coming a mile away. Even as she's reaching forward, saying, "here, let me--," he's pulling back. 

From the outside it might look suspicious. Picking it up, refusing to hand it over. When Rey looks him in the eyes, there' s sharpness there. a probing, a deep well of worry. When he looks back at her, he's resolute. Confused, still, takes a few long moments to find the words that he needs, but present enough that it seems to settle something in her.

"It's not supposed to be like this," he says with all the certainty of someone who knows something to be a truth of the universe, but can't say exactly why or how they know it. The way that anybody touching the Force says things sometimes, he guesses. "I think..."

In the back of his mind, the nebulous extra sense he's only just learning to recognize for what it's always been, the screaming has stopped. In its place is something like stunned silence.

"I think I'm supposed to help." 


End file.
